Friday, October 18, 2002

More On Netflix

My most recent column for Fast Company revisits Netflix, two years after I first wrote about the company for Inside Magazine. Netflix is a great company and has emerged from the dot.com collapse better and smarter and faster.

One thing I left out was an email exchange I had with Reed Hastings, Netflix's CEO. In the company's darkest hour, after the money had been all but spent and the company's demise seemed imminent, Hastings looked around the Board of Directors meeting and thought to himself, "we're cooked." A short while later, the venture guy on the Board said: "What if we double down? Can you really do what you say you can do?" And that was the match that lit the fuse.